At the present time, the general method of measuring the viscosity of gases includes the use of a vibrating resilient wire loop and use of damped oscillating discs. Another method is the use of a piezoelectric transducer to provide vibration energy thereby imparting shear waves to the surrounding fluid. An output signal provides a representation of the properties of the fluid viscosity. The disadvantages of the prior methods are due to the complexity of the apparatus and methodology used in measuring the gas viscosity and the ofen large size of the measuring appartus. Additionally, the later devices are usually not prone to manufacture using batch processing techniques, and thus tend to be costly. In large devices large fluid volumes are necessary. This latter feature tends to exclude fluid measurements where only very small samples of the fluid are available.